Entries in SAG
(89)

Megan Mullaly showing one of her dad's residual checks from SAGMegan Mullally served as host for the 25th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards with a droll, endearingly casual approach, often making Lady Gaga the brunt of good natured jokes. But as with most awards show she got out of the way very early. SAG is all awards and no frills. They even shortened the "I am an actor" intro this year, limiting it to just three people. There's no awards show that's faster than SAG but the continually nervous Oscar producers might want to consider, when trying to shorten their own ceremony, that SAG is not even a fraction as popular as the Globes or Oscars, both of which are considerably longer!

The winners and notes...

BEST ACTOR IN A TV COMEDY Tony Shalhoub, The Marvelous Mrs MaiselTony Shalhoub has prepared nothing because, he suggests, his category was too great to think he'd win. This seems naive since he is an awards magnet. He probably has to wear protective gear whenever entering a ceremony, lest he be pummelled with statuettes of all kinds...

Is the Oscar race as locked up as we think, or will SAG hold some surprises? Care to conjecture about what will win? I'll confess, perhaps foolishly, that I think we could be in for some surprises. Conventional wisdom will tell you that Close, Bale, Ali, and Adams will be the winners... though conventional wisdom will not solve the case of "who wins Outstanding Cast?" since the arguable Best Picture frontrunner Green Book and two most Oscar-nominated pictures Roma and The Favourite are not nominated in that category. With three heavy-hitters out, and Black Panther, Crazy Rich Asians, Bohemian Rhapsody, A Star is Born, and BlacKkKlansman as the nominees, that prize is something of a mystery...

On this special edition of the podcast we ONLY answer reader questions. As many as we could get to in an hour. We had soooo much fun doing this one so we hope you enjoy, and thank you for the diversion.

Index (61 minutes)00:01 SAG nomination leftover feelings05:00 None of us liked Vice and the reviews are mixed. We still think it's an awards contender so we discuss the question of latebreakers in each awards season. 11:45 Randomness: Ethan Hawke, Bohemian Rhapsody, and the Florida Film Critics Circle20:40 Ben is Back starring Lucas Hedges (with sidebars of Boy Erased and Beautiful Boy)33:40 If Beale Street Could Talk45:00 Reader Q: A fine element of a buzzy movie that's not being talked up49:17 Reader Q: Is Best Actress actually set already?51:00 Reader Q: If there wasn't Category Fraud this year what would be happening in Supporting Actress?53:30 Reader Q: Reassign an Oscar win - what's the cascading effect?59:40 Wrap up

December is a bear, isn't it? It just keeps on coming at you and more intense as it goes, too. We're so far behind, we're just going to do this with no structure and no editing. Here is a list of lots of news-items or curiousities that are probably worthy of their own articles but they aren't going to get them! We need a big staff (now seeking volunteers!) Okay, here we go...

Pierre Png, who has a lot of scenes in CRAZY RICH ASIANS, was snubbed while his "replacement" for Gemma Chan's affection, who has about 2 seconds of screen time, was nominated!

We'll keep doing these posts each year until the Screen Actors Guild does something about their most unfortunate awards rule. For those who are new to the awards game, please note: If you are a working actor lucky enough to wind up in a film nominated for "Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture," that doesn't mean you are included in the nomination; you have to have your own title card for that! What this means each year is that actors who aren't really famous yet, or don't have an aggressive agent, wind up left out of the official nomination even if they contributed immeasurably to the success of the film or were highly memorable in some way.

Read on for the specific exclusions this year and the history of most embarrassing omissions from the past due this ruling...

Awkwafina (Crazy Rich Asians) and Laverne Cox (Orange is the New Black) announced the nominations and joked about their height difference, while pronouncing all the names beautifully, being totally gorgeous, and staying enthusiastic about the whole damn thing. We thank them profusely because the ACTUAL nominations were among the worst we've ever seen in our long history of awards-watching and we might have experienced dry-heaving ourselves had we been forced to read them off.

Did the SAG nominating committees only screen 8 movies and 7 tv shows this year?

Screen Actors Guild rules make voting your conscience about who is supporting and lead impossible (the members are required to vote however the actor is campaigned by the studio) unless you are conscientous enough to just not nominate the person if they are cheating... as we are when we vote on such things... but most nominators aren't. So this year we have even worse Category Fraud than usual -- there is barely a Supporting Actress category this year, at all, which is such a shame given all the worthy actual supporting female actors out there.